


Drowning

by lopingloup



Series: Whumptober 2018 [24]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Abusive Parents, Abusive Relationships, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Angst and Feels, Broken Bones, Broken Families, Drowning, Dysfunctional Family, Family Drama, Family Issues, Fantasy, Gen, Held Down, Hurt, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Lots of Whump, Promiscuity, Violence, Whump, Worldbuilding, barely mentioned but fyi, idk its a one shot in a made-up world, not described, with a fucked up ruling family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-09
Updated: 2019-06-09
Packaged: 2020-04-23 13:00:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19151518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lopingloup/pseuds/lopingloup
Summary: Bitter and rebellious, Zae is still not prepared for his father's anger, nor the consequences of his actions.





	Drowning

**Author's Note:**

> Another one! This is an original and just as whumpy as usual - I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> Eternal thanks to my invaluable beta, Imperial_Dragon <3 <3

Zae knotted his fingers in his lap, holding himself rigidly upright as he feigned an indifference that wasn’t even skin-deep. His head was pounding something awful and he feared any sudden movement would mean throwing up the small amount of tea he’d managed this morning.

The heavy wooden door to his father’s work room remained closed and Zae resisted the urge to glare at it, painfully conscious of the sideways glances of the guard stood to his right. He was likely wondering why Zae was sat there and had been for half an hour, his thighs approaching numbness from the hard, wooden bench beneath him.

Zae had no more been told why he’d been summoned than the guard had, but he was fairly damn certain that it had been something to do with the drunken stupor he’d fallen into last night, skipping the monthly evening prayers that was the only public duty that his father still required of him. Instead, Zae had drunk himself to insensibility, but not before fucking his way through a number of unsuitable, but very pretty, young men. They’d scattered by morning but Zae knew his father would have heard, he always did.

Giving into the pain in his head, Zae tilted his head back to rest against the cool wall at his back and closed his eyes briefly against the glare of the sunlight that streamed in from the high, arched windows to his left.

But Fate seemed intent on making his day as miserable as possible – never mind that he’d known last night that there would be consequences and he’d gone and done it anyway – because the huge wooden door swung open just a minute later and Zae jerked upright with a wince at the pain behind his eyes, and the nausea lingering in his stomach like the polluted city fog on a still day.

“Get up,” his father, Vintner, snapped, even as Zae was already getting to his feet. Zae blinked at his tone, tensing at the shimmer of fury that hung over his father’s cold features. Vintner looked him over which such blatant disgust that Zae had to fight the urge to step back, but he only pressed his chapped lips together and met his father’s hard gaze.

Vintner didn’t look at him again, apparently already sick of the sight of him, but just flicked his hand as he walked away and Zae, tense with anger and unease in equal measure, fell into step a pace behind him, just as he’d done since he’d been a boy and his short legs had struggled to keep up.

They passed down the castle’s corridors and Zae thought at first that Vintner was taking him to the main hall, for what purpose he didn’t know, but his father continued past it, making for the courtyard and Zae fixed his face into indifferent aloofness to conceal his disquiet at his father’s cold manner. Vintner’s anger didn’t usually simmer like this, repressed and stony. It always erupted suddenly, violently, his face going as red with his shouting as the bloody nose Zae often ended up with. This silent rage was unnerving.

Zae spotted familiar head of dense, brown curls close to the exit leading to the courtyard, deep in conversation with one of the castle stewards. They belonged to Zae’s eldest brother, Erlik, and he looked up as they approached, his eyes widening in alarm at whatever expression was on Vintner’s face.

“Father,” Erlik greeted warily, dipping his head into a bow. Zae was the only one of his father’s children that refused to lower his gaze in Vintner’s presence. Just the thought of doing so made resentment and old fury coil in his abdomen and Zae was relieved to feel it. The anger kept him strong under his father’s loathing, his brothers’ embarrassment and his sisters’ disappointment.

Vintner normally made his favouritism for Erlik obvious, who was the perfect son and soldier both, but this time he didn’t even acknowledge his eldest’s greeting and Zae gritted his teeth and settled his mouth into a taut, resigned line as he passed Erlik, who stared at him with blatant concern, clearly as unsettled by Vintner’s repressed fury as Zae was. Zae clenched his fist and just followed his father in silence, ignoring the sound of his brother’s hurried footsteps as he fell in behind them.

Vintner strode out into the glaring sunlight and Zae fought not to flinch at the throbbing in his head and his rolling stomach. He almost wanted to laugh, wound tight as he was, but the sight of a gathered crowd made his step falter and his gaze flickered to his father’s broad back, stiff beneath the rich, ox-blood tunic he wore, the gold of the embroidery glittering.

The noise of the gathered people – castle inhabitants and servants most of them, though there were a good number of nobles standing apart – dropped into mutterings and silent stares and Zae’s stomach twisted in denial at the sight as his ears started to ring like he was going to faint. Erlik’s warm hand gripped his arm and Zae turned numbly to him, but Erlik’s face showed that he didn’t know what was going on any more than Zae did.

Though his heart was going so fast it was physically painful, Zae pulled himself together by pure force of will, tugging his arm out of Erlik’s supportive grip. He swept a cold look over the people staring at him before he focused on his father, whose face he could only see in profile. He looked grim, and furious.

 _What is he doing?_ Zae scanned the courtyard as a fear-heavy thought tumbled into his head: that his father would have him whipped. But there was no whipping post and no stern-faced soldier holding a whip, or a cane. There was a pair of soldiers stood to attention by his father’s right, separate to his father’s normal guards, and they made Zae uneasy, but his father turned finally to look at him and Zae’s thoughts didn’t go any further.

Vintner wasn’t a man for speeches and he only stared at Zae for one, long moment, almost like he didn’t recognise him and sweat slid down Zae’s back, making his plain shirt cling to his skin. He was barely dressed as two of his father’s soldiers had rushed him out of his rooms while he was still pulling a shirt on over last night’s wine-stained breeches and he only had boots on because he’d collapsed into bed without taking them off. It was a ridiculous thing to think at that moment but he was glad that he wasn’t stood barefoot in the stony courtyard in front of all these people.

His father shook his head once, his jaw-length, grey-black hair brushing the top of his collar, before he heaved an audible sigh and waved a hand at the pair of soldiers to his right.

“We all know why we’re here,” he said heavily, in that voice that made Zae want to simultaneously beg his father’s forgiveness and punch him in the gut for all he’d done to Zae’s mother. To all of them.

The two soldiers advanced on Zae and Zae sucked in a breath, fighting not to step backwards. He _wasn’t_ a coward, whatever other accusations his father might lay on him.

“Father!” Erlik protested at his side but Vintner barely spared him the single, sharp glare needed to silence him.

The soldiers wouldn’t meet Zae’s eyes but just grasped his arms, as if he was a prisoner, a criminal. Zae gritted his jaw, glaring his hatred at Vintner as he finally found his voice.

“ _I_ don’t know why we’re here,” he growled, determined to keep his voice steady. He jerked his arms, tugging against the soldiers’ hold on him as they dragged him off to the side, for no Fate-damned reason Zae could figure out. “Why don’t you enlighten me, _father_?” He spat the word out.

Zae hadn’t known his father could look so angry but the sheer vitriol in his gaze made Zae’s legs weak. He looked plainly murderous. Zae swallowed painfully and didn’t speak again.

But he did silently dug his heels into the gritty dirt, the only protest he was capable of with the fear gathering inside him, but the soldiers just towed him over to the corner of the courtyard. The servants muttered lowly and the nobles whispered in their lilting, fake accents, ladies’ fans fluttering like anxious, colourful birds. Zae hated them.

A bizarrely strong scent of wine assaulted his senses and he blinked, confused as to whether the scent was real or conjured by his addled brain, before he saw where the soldiers were dragging him and he tensed, thinking he was going to be sick.

It was just an animal’s trough, for the horses and the other castle livestock, but even though it was out of the sun and heavily shadowed, Zae saw that the liquid glinted red. _Wine_. Fear made his thoughts painfully slow, but he saw in the wine-filled trough his father’s perverted sense of justice and he understood. What was more fitting for a drunken wastrel of a son than to drown him in wine?

He twisted to look over his shoulder but his father was staring blankly past him like he didn’t even care to watch. Erlik was the only one in the courtyard who looked like he gave a damn and he met Zae’s eyes with a panicked urgency, clearly desperate to help but too loyal to disobey their father. Zae twisted his lips into a sad, queasy smile; _its not your fault_ , he wanted to say.

Still, Zae had no intention of accepting his father’s will passively and he dug his boots into the dirt like a horse tensed to buck before he wrenched violently against the soldiers’ grip, freeing his right arm for long enough to slam it into the soldier’s face with a harsh grunt, blood erupting from the man’s nose like water from a pump.

The soldier reeled back and Zae kneed the other man in the groin, eliciting a gut-deep groan of pain before his father’s personal guard were on him and, with one of the men’s meaty hands clenched around the back of his neck and all but cutting off the blood to his head, Zae couldn’t do anything but stay upright as he was shoved the last couple of metres to the water trough. He was shoved to his knees so hard that his chin clipped the edge of the trough and he cut his lip as his teeth clacked painfully together, leaving him dazed, his mouth full of blood.

The soldiers’ hands moved under his arms, one remaining clamped around the back of his neck whilst another fisted his short hair, and then, before he could draw breath, he was dragged forwards and his whole upper body shoved into the wine.

He writhed like a caught rabbit, panic making his kicks and struggles uncoordinated and desperate and his hands shot out to grab the edges of the trough, trying to resist the crushing weight of the hands holding him under. But his right wrist was grabbed and twisted behind him, a sharp, awful pain in his wrist making him gasp so that he sucked in wine and choked on it. His chest spasmed, his lungs and throat and eyes burning like he was being drowned in vinegar and he couldn’t tell whether his vision was fading or if it was only the dark wine cutting off the light.

When he was finally dragged out, he was completely limp and struggling to find the energy to vomit the wine out of his airways, his eyes streaming and his twisted wrist unable to hold him up. He choked and coughed, dragging in wet breaths that seared his insides. His head pounded so hard that he couldn’t hear anything else and, deliriously, he thought he must have swallowed enough wine to be well on his way to being drunk again.

If his father, or his brother, spoke before Zae was being dragged back towards the trough, Zae didn’t hear it, but when the soldier’s callused hand on his head tried to force him back under the wine, he screamed and kicked out viciously, striking someone’s shin.

“Kill me?” he rasped, again resisting the soldiers trying to push him down. He drew another, agonising breath. “Kill me?” he said, a shout this time. “Drown me like a dog? Is that all I’m worth?” he broke off coughing and thrashed when the men tried again, harder, to shove him under. Zae dragged in another lungful of air. “WILL YOU MURDER ME AS YOU MURDERED HER?” he shouted, blind with hatred. “YOU KILLED HER, YOU _KILLED_ HER, Y-”

He lost the fight against the soldiers and was shoved so forcefully into the trough that his head hit the stone base underwater and, briefly stunned, he went slack.

He didn’t know how long he was held under that time, only that when he was dragged out and dropped in the dirt, he didn’t have the strength in his limbs to stop himself hitting the ground chin-first and he only lay there, his body weakly coughing up bitter liquid without any input from his conscious brain.

“Zae? Zae?”

Hands clutched his shoulders and Zae tried to shrug them off but his fingers only twitched as he was pulled upright, his back thumped, causing him to splutter as the remainder of the wine spluttered out of him.

“Zae can you hear me?” Fingers brushed his soaked hair out of his face and Zae gagged on the stench of wine and tried weakly to push the hands away from him before he finally realised that it was Erlik and he sagged.

His eyes stung like he’d rubbed salt in them but he forced them open and found Erlik crouched in front of him, his brother’s perfectly neat clothing stained red down the front where he’d dragged Zae upright.

Zae struggled against the stupid, _stupid_ urge to cry and looked dizzily past Erlik to where the crowds were dissipating, staring at him as they went, and his father was nowhere in sight. Zae wondered why he wasn’t dead. He wasn’t sure if he cared that he wasn’t, not whilst he felt so disorientated, sick and sore. A blurry figure was striding towards them and Zae flinched before he recognised Rasmar, the third oldest of his brothers.

“Fates above, what the fuck?” Rasmar snapped as he dropped to his knees and took Zae’s cold, clammy face in his hands.

“I’ve never seen him so angry,” Erlik said, his hands still holding Zae’s shoulders, keeping him sat up.

“But-” Rasmar broke off and just stared blankly at Zae in horror before he released him.

Zae dragged his lips into a grin he knew was gruesome and then scrubbed his face and shoved his hair back. Sharp, sickening pain shot down his wrist and he glanced down to find that his third finger was at an unnatural angle and beginning to swell. But the pain of it faded against the backdrop of the awful burn in his chest and the splitting agony in his head.

But holding himself together whilst feeling like there was a hatchet in his heart was what he’d done for fucking years and he felt blindly behind himself for the edge of the stone trough and tried to drag himself upright, only managing it because Rasmar grabbed him and stopped him falling. He went to shrug his brother off but didn’t try too hard, letting his brothers half-walk, half-drag him back within the castle.

“My rooms,” Zae gritted out and though Erlik protested weakly, they helped him stagger up there, dripping wine and causing each and every servant they passed to stare.

Once in his rooms, Zae collapsed onto the window seat, careless of the expensive coverings, and dragged off his boots, his sodden breeches and his saturated shirt, dropping them on the floor in a wet, red-stained pile. He had to struggle not to retch at the overwhelming stench of alcohol that clung to everything.

“Zae…” Erlik said, sounding uncertain. Rasmar just stood with his arms crossed, his face like a storm brewing. Zae had always gotten on best with him, both of them hateful of castle life, with all its extravagance and falsity. He’d been the only one willing to speak openly with Zae about their mother’s suicide after Vintner’s decades-long neglect, abuse and infidelity had robbed her of the will to go on. As the youngest, Zae had been closest to her, barely leaving the safety of her skirts as a child and inconsolable when she hung herself just after he’d turned fourteen. He’d never forgiven his father. He knew Rasmar hadn’t either, but Zae was the only one of their mother’s eight children who’d say it to Vintner’s face.

Furious and shaking and half-way to terrified even though he hated himself for it, Zae thought that there were only two options. Stay or go. He could leave here, stealing as much of his father’s treasure as he could carry and exile himself, starting afresh somewhere new. His father wanted him gone and, hell, Zae didn’t want to be here.

But no-one had made Vintner answer for what he’d done to Zae’s mother and Zae couldn’t leave, not whilst he seemed to be the only one of her children that felt the weight of death still clinging to his shoulders.

 _I’ll kill him_ , Zae vowed silently, for his mother and himself both. _I’ll kill him and then I’ll go_. His brothers stood obliviously by, Rasmar leaning against the wall with a frown. Zae ignored them. He knew what he had to do.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> What did you think?? Do you want to stab Zae's dad, cus I do and I wrote the bastard ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ Comments very welcome!! <3


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